I remembered the mom who taught me to add a pat of butter to tomato sauce, who befriended every waiter who served her, who made a pros-and-cons list with me when I was deciding which job to take after college, who invited lonely strangers to our Thanksgiving dinners. That was when my own amnesia began to lift: I remembered good things, not just the bad. On a rainy September day, we gathered to bury the mom who had hurt me repeatedly, deeply, forgetfully. I left the hospital one night and she still existed I fell asleep, woke to a telephone call in my darkened bedroom, and learned she no longer did. At 59, my mother suffered a massive heart attack and died several weeks later. She had chosen you, and you were magnificent.įor years I tried to address these injuries-the college financial-aid forms she never filled out the high tea bridal shower she insisted on planning, during which she consoled me because she hadn’t invited any of my friends-but that was impossible: She either didn’t remember these events or wouldn’t allow herself to. Not the time she swore you weren’t invited to that birthday party because, you now suspect, she just didn’t feel like taking you. Not the time she forgot about pickup and left you at school for hours. Not the time she slammed you into the wall for eating leftover Chinese food in their air-conditioned bedroom (the house’s only air-conditioned room) because you knew she was on a diet and the smell made her hungry. If it was your turn, she’d whisper in your ear while everyone was sleeping, “C’mon, let’s go get some coffee!” and you’d know she meant eggs and Taylor ham at the diner, and that there you’d hear some small, revelatory detail about her life that she’d entrust to you and only you. If one didn’t give her what she desired, she’d move onto the next. The first item: L’Air duTemps-or, for those of us who couldn’t yet read, a glossy photo of the perfume cut from a magazine. If I ever wondered what my mom wanted for Mother’s Day, all I had to do was visit the fridge and look at the list, written in her exquisite cursive, she’d made for us kids. Now that her mom is gone, Amanda Avutu chooses which version to remember.

Dead blondes bad mothers